Transmission

The best way to develop heart is to use it. Your solo practice, which you put yourself through as a kind of daily devotion, or torture, whichever way you look at it, helps to develop fibre and reduce the desirous ego (“Your ego is your concern – don't make it mine!” my teacher often bellows at me.) However, it is always the partner work that has most significance, and that is most revolutionary. It wakes you up, not just to the possibility of being knocked off balance, but to the miracle of something far more significant than your self or their self – what happens between you – the being you create together. If you can put this first in your life, and it is always happening, you are never alone, always interacting, especially once you begin to become aware of your (and therefore others') energy, then not only will it keep you young and fresh and on your toes, but it will take you deeper into creation, or connexion (is there a difference?), the only reality worth venturing deeper into. When your time with your teacher and the teaching produces such an energetic togetherness then thank your lucky stars because you're in the midst of a special transmission. A transmission of energy happens when the stimulation of your open and willing and ready presence thrusts the teacher into aspects of the teaching he had forgotten about or didn't even know he possessed. It is never an act of choice – it just happens if the time and company are right. It has nothing to do with giving instruction, and it is as much a gift to the teacher as it is to the student. Teaching a reasonably good student will always encourage the teacher to reach beyond himself and come to understandings he wouldn't have stumbled upon alone. But a transmission is different – it has the feeling of something new to both, and yet from further back in the distant lineage than anything before. The teacher cannot reach it alone – he just doesn't have the energy – it requires the pooled energy of the two of you. It is very important then that the transmission becomes the new foundation of the work, at least until the next one rears its head.